A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web (“Web”). An information resource may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users to easily navigate their browsers to related resources.
Although browsers are primarily intended to access the Web, they can also be used to access information provided by Web servers in private networks or files in file systems. Some browsers can be also used to save information resources to file systems.
Web search engines index information on the Web and provide interfaces by which users can search for indexed information, typically by one or more keywords or search terms. Web searches usually result in a list of results or “hits,” which refer to web pages, images, information, and other types of files that are determined to be relevant in some way to the search terms. For the purposes of this disclosure, searchable Web directories, which are typically maintained by human editors, may be considered the equivalent of Web search engines, which typically operate algorithmically (at least in part).
Searching the Web is a common activity. More particularly, it is a common practice for a user to use search terms from one Web page to identify other Web pages that may be related to the search terms. In many cases, such a Web search involves the user copying text or other information and pasting a link into a search box. This practice, however, typically requires some or all of several steps, such as:                (1) highlight the desired text;        (2) perform a copy command;        (3) move the cursor over to the search box either on a page associated with a Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”) of a search engine, such as www.google.com (provided by Google Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif.), www.bing.com (provided by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash.), or the like; or a search box in the toolbar within the browser;        (4) activating the cursor within the search box, typically by using a pointer;        (5) perform a paste command; and        (6) execute a search (typically by activating the “enter” key or clicking on a “search” control).        
This repetitive action is cumbersome and slows the process of searching on the web. Many web browsers implement search bar and/or search box functionality, typically via a text-entry field in a browser toolbar area. Web searches are also frequently performed via a search box embedded in a web page. As discussed above, a user could manually select text and paste it into a search bar or other search box.
A number of browser accelerators exist, many of which provide the ability to search terms after they have been highlighted. However, these tools do not let the user edit the search terms prior to executing the search. As a result, a user often ends up performing a first, undesired, search on the selected text, and then editing the search terms before performing a second, desired, search. Moreover, these tools do not let the user automatically search using search terms associated with non-text elements of a document (e.g., images and the like).